the squat stone idol daubed with red paint, whose temple was the shade of the peepul tree. She asked him, “Why women were ever born into the land?” and besought his help with tears and passionate pleadings. In vain she cried, “Ram, ram,” and took him offerings of flowers, and gashed her arm with a sickle, and shed her hot young blood before him. He maintained his habitual placid pose, his vacant stare, his graven grin, and gave no sign. No, at the end of six weary moons there was still no answer to her prayers. Heart-sick, Jasoda now went and gazed longingly at the river. She stole away to visit it whilst her relations took their midday rest in the cane-fields. Alas! it was very low, and fat muggers lay upon its grey mud banks, as lazy as so many logs of wood, though their evil little eyes were active enough--watching for floating corpses. No, no; a big rapid torrent in the rains, with a strong flood, fed by the far-away snows, rushing boldly onward, bearing great blocks of foam on its brown bosom,--into _that_ she could cast herself, but not into one of these slow, slimy channels, creeping past greasy banks, whereon ravenous alligators would battle for her body. As time advanced, the tyranny of the family became more oppressive, and Jasoda threw patience to the winds--indeed, it had long been threadbare. To be sent five or six koss in the burning June sun, to gratify the momentary whim of Taramonnee, a child, or, rather, imp of five, was beyond endurance, and represented the proverbial “last straw.” The domestic martyr being hopeless and desperate, now turned on her tormentors, as a leopardess at bay. Why should she be as an ox, a beast of burthen, all her days? She gave shrill invective for invective, accepted curses and blows with sullen indifference, and refused to work beyond a certain portion. Yea, they might kill her, if they so willed; it would be all the better; and she oscillated between fits of hot passion and moods of cold obstinacy. Her aged grandmother could not imagine what had happened to the household slave. She was usually so long-suffering, so easily driven and abused. The hag and the other women put their heads together and took counsel, whilst the rebel sat aloof in a dark corner of her hut, like some wild animal in its den, her fixed dark eyes staring out on the glaring white courtyard with an expression of intense, hopeless despair. She hated every one. She felt that she could almost kill them. Truly she had been born in an evil hour and under an evil star, and she cursed both hour and planet. There were Junia and Talloo, girls who had played with her: each had a husband and babies and bangles; yea, and cows of their own. Why was she beaten and half starved, and treated like a stray pariah dog? She was handsomer than either. Isa, the son of Ganga, had told her that her eyes were stars, her teeth as seed pearls, and her lips like the bud of the pomegranate; yet these fat, ugly women slept at ease on their